Never use the "Sending to a friend" option in PayPal for commercial purchases!

[Halcyon]

In light of a recent issue involving a scammer, I feel this post should be a sticky.

If you've been requested to transfer money via PayPal to someone you don't know or trust, ensure you use the "Paying for an item or service" option. If the "seller" insists you use "Sending to a friend", be very wary as you might be about to be scammed. PayPal's Buyer Protection policy does not apply to personal payments.

Report suspicious behaviour from EEVblog forum users directly to a moderator, or Dave.

https://www.paypal.com/au/cshelp/article/whats-the-difference-between-friends-and-family-or-goods-and-services-payments-help277

[AVGresponding]

Ultimately, excluding the protection part, the only difference in using the normal PayPal is the fees, which if the buyer offers to pay, the seller should have no objections.

[Zucca]

I suggest to use a paypal fee calculator when not using the "sending to a friend" payment, like

https://www.salecalc.com/paypal

https://weareindy.com/paypal-fee-calculator

https://thefeecalculator.com/

In this way the seller gets exactly what was agreed on.

Example, to pay $100 protected by Paypal:
https://www.salecalc.com/paypal?p=100&l=us&r=0&e=0&f=0&m=2&c=0

[SeanB]

Yes, the send to friend makes the sender pay, but if you use the calculator so the scammer gets the full fee, they will not quickly realise it, and thus the protection might be able to help you.  But if they ask for that, they are a scammer anyway, same to those who want to communicate outside of Paypal as well, as 99.9999% of those are scammers.

[Zucca]

Everytime I have NOT used PayPal "sending to friend" to a scammer, I always got the money back because of the PayPal protection.

My calculator fee suggestion was just so that the seller gets the full amount.